


Massa Confusa

by LotusRox



Category: Il pendolo di Foucault | Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-08-09
Packaged: 2018-08-07 15:51:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7720711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LotusRox/pseuds/LotusRox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Surrounded by morons, two disenfranchised undergrads meet at a Kabbalah workshop in the fifties. What happens next will warm your heart.</p><p>Or, how Diotallevi and Belbo became friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Massa Confusa

**Author's Note:**

> I want to thank @thelonebamf for being the sweetest beta and helping me beat this into shape.

Jacopo had met _him_ in a Kabbalah workshop for beginners back in the fifties, ages before their time at the publishing house.

 

Neither of them was older than 25 back then. Young men barely out of university, feeling positively provincial in their own city because of their personal histories, looking for an occupation while their Thesis - capital-lettered, accented, Greek in its pronunciation - sat menacingly on their desks, incomplete and scattered.

 

They may have exchanged  a word, or two, or five during the classes. Discovering an affinity of interests and a common disdain for those first hippie precursors, authentic pioneers who came to induct themselves at the Torah with books about yoga and pyramids and Knights Templar under their arms.

 

“You can bet those are outposts of future morons”, had said one of them, while asking himself on the inside what the hell was he doing there.

 

“Simply diabolical”, the other had agreed, and they had ended up at a nearby cafe after the class.

 

“I want to write but I don’t know about _what”,_ Jacopo had confessed, after enriching that diluted coffee with two fingers of cheap rum from a flask. “Haven’t surrendered yet, though.”

 

“Are you looking for inspiration in the Book of Books?”

 

“It could be. You?”

 

“... No, no. Tell me, tell me more.”

 

Eyebrow raised and interest piqued, Jacopo persisted, “What are _you_ looking for?”

 

“An act of faith”, and he paused. The next thing he added almost fearfully, “And also a name, my name. You know the sense of identity that kind of thing gives, I reckon.”

 

“Oh. Yeah. Yeah, I know how that is.”

 

They exchanged telephone numbers, and of course promises of reunions at that cafe, the kind that are made with the very intention of never being fulfilled. They had revealed too much, and back then they still held the belief information held more power than secrecy. They lived for it, and would live _from_ it once they graduated. A new encounter would have tasted too much like broken rules.

 

Almost ten years later, causality would join them once more to work for Mr. Garamond. They would recognize each other, silently. Neither would’ve changed too much physically, if you didn’t count the sheen of time and disappointment benumbing their faces.

 

“My name is Jacopo Belbo”, he introduced himself as if they had never seen each other, extending a slim hand. The bright yellow of tobacco was already starting to permanently stain the tips of his fingers, it made them look older than their owner. Jacopo didn’t want to look him in the eye. He was too hard set into forgetting and burying the years he had wandered looking for a readable plotline, an idea worth writing about.

 

“Diotallevi”, answered the other, with an affected smile betraying his simple demeanor as he returned the greeting. The ascetic ways that had made him change his coffee for plain water in that first encounter hadn’t contributed at all to give him a healthier appearance.

 

“Are you Jewish?”, Jacopo asked, pointing to his dark hat and clothes, and the exquisite _Kosherness_ of his gestures. The question was pure Piamonte, with those shades of inevitable irony, but there was no malice in it.

 

“Absolutely by birth, and definitely by vocation,” Diotallevi nodded, bringing an open hand to his chest as if saying look at me, this is the real deal, forget about everything else.

 

If it was bound to be a comedy of identities, then this was the first act, first scene.

  
Each would be the best friend the other had ever had.

**Author's Note:**

> Just like Belbo, I live off my past glories - this fic was wrote several years ago and I only got around translating it from Spanish tonight.
> 
> If there's anyone reading it, please let me know what you think!


End file.
